Many, many years ago,

almost as long ago as someone should have written an article about the films of 2012, someone wrote about the Oscars.  I stand by everything I said, especially my own desire to hate and own one.  This time, for sake of organizational principles, I’d like to focus on the Razzies, which were cute…whenever this joke was.  I feel like there should be an actual forum (oh look, I’ve just created one) where one (me) can talk about genuinely terrible movies.  The Razzies is not it.  Oooh, Jack and Jill is ‘bad’.  Are politicians corrupt?  Are babies wonderful and can never do any wrong? Is JJ Abrams…

crap, never mind.

To be fair Jack and Jill is not a great film to be sure, even within its genre, which is, to specify, the Accidental Surreal.  Like many of its ilk, it is actually quite boring for the first forty minutes, and Mr. Adam Sandler in drag is not automatically funny (though I suppose after forty minutes, having the film act like it is funny starts to get funny).  But halfway through, like many of its œuvre, it starts to jump a snake canyon of sharks.  We are treated, for example, to Mr. Al Pacino – the most egregious of check cashers of late – in what can only be called the role of a lifetime: asked to portray falling in love with Mr. Sandler in drag, he humps the giant sweat stain left by same in a bed.  Take that, Paul Thomas Anderson!

Jack and Jill

Profits!

Losses!

On one hand, the Razzies are incompetent even at their own job.  If you’re talking ‘bad’ movies, where was Alex Cross?  Or The Raven?  Given we’re talking about people that probably couldn’t be bothered to make it a tenth of the way through a screener of Twilight 3.1 without giving themselves a high chest bump about how clever they were, it’s doubtful that they were really diligent researchers so much as they were in love with the idea of being the People Who Watch Bad Films.  That’s my job.  Also good films.  Also everything.  This is the point of being me: to be in competition with everyone.  No one to chest bump, but no one’s as good at that as I am anyway.

But such small portions say I, because on the other hand, the Razzies are also incompetent at their criteria: they are making fun of films that actually are kind of fun.  We see movies not to be bored, and there’s a lot of boredom to be had out there.  Creatures terrified of sitting still that we are, the last thing we want is to sit in a darkened room, and feel nothing, a nothing which other films provide with great…abundance.  That sentence got away from me, if you’re a stickler about grammar.  If you’re a stickler about particle physics, we should be fine.  There’s a lot of tedium to be had in a Dungeon Siege Tale or After Earth, but there’s a lot of joy too.  In films like Salmon Fishing in the Yemen or Prometheus or Star Trek or Tintin there’s just hatred.  That’s a kind of boredom.  A very, very, very strong kind of boredom.

Having recently discovered that I had written whole pieces on all these films, I’m in a bit of  quandary.  I recently doubled my number of subscriber to the website (you should be able to guess how many I have now.  If you’re a particle physicist, that is).  Strangely I feel compelled to write more, and have been tapping away tirelessly (between bouts of PhD, Season 5 of NYPD Blue, cakes and stealing from Season 5 NYPD Blue to write the greatest film of all time) to complete eleven pieces for each of the awarded films.  Jeez, just counted.  Never count if you’re want to get anything done.

So, I threw together a quick Z is for Zombie, or whatever I’m calling it now, and finished them.  In the interim, I saw the unwatchable (this is technically impossible, which explained how I survived) Man of Steel, which was shot in IMAX, projected at the BFI IMAX in London, only to discover they were not showing the IMAX print.  As such, after these eleven pieces go up, you will have to wait even longer, for the even longer explanation of what IMAX actually is, since no one, including the people who run the theater seem to know.  Be patient, you bastards!

In the interim to that, my Razzies, for actually bad films, followed, because fair is fair, by my Oscars for the good and missed films.  For the sake of copyright infringement laws, and my Razzie-like laziness, let’s call them the Leonards, and the Abrams.

The Abrams

You know: for what it’s worth…

And the Abrams for Worst Performance, Inversely Related To How It Was Tolerated, Let Alone Praised goes to…

Ms. Jessica Chastain, for Zero Dark Thirty.  The problem was, she did everything right.  What’s that now?  You can read about it here:

And the Abrams for Worst Screenplay, Which Wasn’t Totally Terrible, But To Win For This and Not Inglorious Basterds I Mean What The Fuck goes to…

Mr. Quentin Tarantino, for Django Unchained.  Again, hardly the worst screenplay of the year, but certainly less insane than Jack and Jill, and about as tense as a trip to the refrigerator.

…..

And I’m back.  Where did you think I was going to go? You can read about it here.

And the Moonrise Kingdom/Master Award for Unflinching Praise in the Face of Utter Crap goes to:

The Critics, who really, really need to shut the fuck up about Moonrise Kingdom and The Master.  As you see, I have completed my rants about these films, but cannot help but look to a future where the good films from these directors, like Bottle Rocket and Magnolia are loved and remembered, and their shit is flushed (if it’s brown…).

And as if by magic, I’m living there now. You can read the old ass pieces, which you already have, here and here.

And finally, the Abrams for the Worst Film, And It’s a Tie, Because I Can Have Ties, and I’m a Bit Bummed That JJ Abrams Didn’t Actually Make a Movie in 2012 so He Could Get an Award I Named After Him in My Neverending Abrams Hatefest goes to…

Skyfall and Prometheus.  And yes I’m aware that everyone loved Skyfall, but the point of the Abrams, which should be the point of the Razzies, is to single out films that deserve censure, but have not received same.  The fact that Prometheus, which we now agree is one of the worst films ever made, wasn’t even mentioned in the Razzies simply proves my point.  That I am great.

Strange, that’s the point of everything I say.

You too?

Huh.

Well, thank God we agree on everything.

You can read about them here and here.

The Leonards

This is esoteric, even for me, so £100 to the first person who 1) can even tell what it is that I drew, and 2) understands the point. Competition closes after the tenth person reads this article, so take your time!

And despite all the enjoyable hatred, it was a pretty decent year for films, and now we praise the ones that get us to keep coming back.  It’s a 10% chance for a good film, but they’re good enough that the other nine films don’t matter. Especially if you’re scribbling notes about how terrible they are, notes which you will use to praise the good ones, so you won’t have to talk about why they’re good, because largely, you don’t know.  And so:

The Leonard for the least Leonardian script goes to…

Mr. David Cronenberg for Cosmopolis.  Yeah, you didn’t see this, but you should have, at least so you can then yell at me for making you see it.  It’s not like other movies, and that should be reason enough.  In a break (one might call it hypocrisy, if one wasn’t one’s piece oneself in the third person objective) from wanting everything to be about story, there’s no story here: just a bunch of people saying ridiculously poetic stuff without anything of consequence happening.  Alternatively, there’s a bunch of very important stuff happening, but no one is talking about it.  Hence the ridiculous poetry. You can read about it here.

The Leonard For, Well, You Know, the most Leonardian script goes to…

Mr. Andrew Dominik for Killing Them Softly.  I don’t like Mr. Mark Kermode (especially that he hates Keith Lemon: the Movie), but praise him for being alone in recognizing this pretty great film.  And so very, very Leonardian.  Yes, in retrospect, I have problems with the direction, which verged from terrific to wanky, but the script is as perfect as can be. You can read about it here.

The Leonard for Best Editing goes to…

the eight billion people who worked on, shot, wrote and were in, digitally or otherwise, Cloud Atlas.  I’ve said before and I’ll say it again.  The thing that kills me about the Oscars is the incompetence in technical awards, which usually fall under the tag ‘not even nominated’.  Recent bafflers have included the failure to nominate Rubber for photography, Killing Them Softly for sound design and Spring Breakers for music.  Yes, it’s too early to nominate Spring Breakers, but I know what’s (not) going to happen.

I just know.

I know because Cloud Atlas, a film that revolutionizes editing, wasn’t even nominated.  Sigh, and sound of relief that I’m the only one who noticed. You can read about it here.

The Leonard for film that I totally shouldn’t like, but did, and thus prove that I can be objective goes to:

Mr. Tony Kushner for Lincoln It’s hard being a contrarian, or rather it’s easy, and so to confuse you, or maybe because I actually liked it, I’m throwing in Lincoln which I really, really liked.  A solid script, and not unlike Cloud Atlas kept track of multiple characters and stories with ease.  The problem lies only in the title, and the editing, by that’s why the award is really for me. You can read about it here.

The Leonard For Best Genre Film goes to…

How I Spent My Summer Vacation.  You know I chose this partly because living in the UK, I was able to see it in the theater, which allows bragging rights, doubled by the fact that it was straight to pay-per-view in the US, under the even more unfortunate title Get the Gringo.  Thing of it is, a very tidy little film, much better than Mr. Gibson’s other foray into the Westlake-y amoral criminals with a heart of gold which they find a way to steal from themselves and sell on the gold heart market genre, and eight gazillion times better than this year’s unfortunate Parker.  It has the only quality a movie actually needs: I want to see it again. You can read about it here.

The Leonard for Best Direction, Which Really Is Just Another Award for Scriptwriting, but in fact the Direction Is Pretty Great goes to…

Flight.  I was surprised not to see this film praised more highly, though secretly pleased, since I want to be the cool one.  It’s the best film about addiction ever made, I think because it makes it so big, transforming Ted and Flight the same film.  If there was, like the Golden Globes, an division between musical/comedy and drama, a strange thing indeed since comedy is harder to make, and we enjoy it more…it just occurs to me, are awards for movies to expiate the guilt for the things we really like?  Also, what happened to that sentence?

Anyway, if there was such a division, Flight would be best drama and Ted best comedy.  Or musical, but Ted is slightly better.  You, by six midi-chlorians. You can read about it here.

The Leonard For Best Film, Straight Up goes to…

Mr. Seth MacFarlane for Ted.  Though my take on the Oscars vacillate between envy and boredom, it is boredom that finally wins out.  Like reality TV, I have little desire to see people humiliate themselves for our entertainment.  I like that humiliation to be scripted.  It’s how I tolerate it.  It’s also how I justify it.  But the Oscars also have a content problem, in that they’re really not going to have even tolerable films for me to care about whether a bunch of nihilists think they were depressing enough to win.  This year was the worst of all worlds, since the man who had made the best film of the year was forced (don’t tell me he volunteered) to host the ceremony that he should have won hands down.  Besides being the most memorable film of the year, there’s also the quality of its being genuinely subversive, made even more so by the fact no one noticed it was. You can read about it here.

Don’t believe me?  You’re just going to have to believe me.

Take those last two sentences, put them in a film about someone who does something good and dies, and I’ll see you next year…at the mall!